A Message From The President of USA Swimming

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

The “President’s Message” is a continuing effort on my part to keep the members of USA Swimming informed about current happenings in our sport and our organization.  Please feel free to share this message with others.

Following our Board of Directors meeting held on January 28 in Colorado Springs, it seemed like an appropriate time to provide you with a brief update of current activities within USA swimming.  Following are a few items I think you will find of interest.

Executive Director General Update

Chuck Wielgus, our Executive Director, provided a general update to the Board, which is included as part of this Message.  Please click here to see the update.

Athlete Protection/Safe Sport Program

Name Change.  In its January meeting, the USA Swimming Board of Directors voted to change the name of the Athlete Protection Program to “Safe Sport Program.”  Some of the rationale behind this change is follows: 

1. Proactive:  “Safe Sport” is positive in connotation and is language consistent with our overall, positive goal: to provide a safe, healthy, fun sport environment for all of our members through a proactive and preventative approach.
2. Inclusive: It is a goal of USA Swimming’s program to serve and protect our entire membership, including our athlete members. The “Safe Sport” name allows us to emphasize that the protection of children is our priority without excluding other membership.
3. Consistency:  The USOC launched its Safe Sport initiative in 2011, after USA Swimming’s Athlete Protection Program launch in 2010.  We expect more NGBs to create internal safe sport programs and fall in line with USOC nomenclature. Shifting USA Swimming’s program to language consistent with the rest of the Olympic movement sends a message to our membership that we are working as a united front against abuse in sport. 

Education. USA Swimming will offer online athlete protection programming, specifically designed for our 300,000 athletes and their parents. Education remains the cornerstone of our efforts and we are pleased to make this research-based curriculum available at no charge. Empowering both parents and athletes about this issue remains critical to the success of our Safe Sport program. The online courses are voluntary, but strongly recommended. The programming will be available in the late spring, and more information will be posted soon at www.usaswimming.org/protect.

Quadrennial Business Plan for 2013-2016

On January 17-18, I joined Chuck Wieglus and the senior staff for a two-day planning retreat to begin work on the Quadrennial Business Plan for 2013-2016.  The focus of this initial meeting was on high level issues such as core objectives, cultural values, and key priorities.  In all aspects of the discussions, I was very impressed with the staff’s concern for the short-term and long-term success of USA Swimming.  There were no personal agendas or staff “turf” arguments and everyone had one thing in mind, ‘How do we make USA Swimming better?”

Last September, the Board of Directors endorsed our continued commitment to the three core objectives of BUILD, PROMOTE, and ACHIEVE.  We continue to embrace these and refined the expanded definitions of each as follow: 

• BUILD the Base – We seek to expand our membership and strengthen the sport at the grassroots level in order to engage as many people as possible in the sport of swimming.
• PROMOTE the Sport – We seek to promote the awareness of the sport and organization to inspire participation in swimming, and raise financial support to benefit the overall mission of USA Swimming and the USA Swimming Foundation.
• ACHIEVE Sustained Competitive Success – We seek to continue the rich tradition of performance success at the Olympic Games and other high-level international competitions.

We also reviewed the list of ten basic value statements USA Swimming always tries to use in conducting its business.  We concluded that we believed the value statements are extremely important, but we needed to make a few modifications to incorporate statements that address safe sport and athlete protection, and diversity and inclusion.  The revised values as approved by the Board of Directors are as follows:

We will: 

1. Embrace the responsibilities of leadership and strive for excellence in everything we do;
2. Act with integrity and openness;
3. Be service-oriented with our members, business partners, and each other;
4. Engage in disciplined planning, but not be afraid to act intuitively to confront challenges and seize opportunities;
5. Identify clear priorities and allocate our time and resources accordingly;
6. Hold ourselves and each other accountable to the highest standards of performance results and professionalism;
7. Exhibit an entrepreneurial spirit for growth, and a positive “can do” attitude;
8. Encourage environments in which our members are safe;
9. Promote the importance of diversity and inclusion; and
10. Constantly strive to learn and improve, always be open to questions, and maintain a willingness to change. 

Much of our discussions during the two-day retreat centered on what we believed should be the three (3) most important priorities aligned with each core objective.  These priorities will become the driving force behind our development of specific strategies for the next quad and beyond.  I personally believe these priorities are fundamental to what USA Swimming is all about and provide a clear direction for the long-term success of our organization and our sport.  Following are the three most important priorities we identified for each core objective:

BUILD the Base
1.  Stronger LSCs
2.  Stronger clubs
3.  Grow membership

PROMOTE the Sport
1.  Promote the sport of swimming
2.  Promote the organization of USA Swimming
3.  Grow revenue

ACHIEVE Sustained Competitive Success
1.  Success in Rio and beyond
2.  Serve and support athletes
3.  Serve and support coaches

The next phase of planning for our quadrennial business plan will be to develop the strategies, programs, services, and resource allocations we believe best align to the key priorities.  A very important part of this process will be for staff to take a “zero based” approach in evaluating all of our existing programs.  Nothing will be taken for granted and every program will be evaluated as to its effectiveness and to its effective use of financial, staff, and volunteer resources.  We will also be looking at “head count” to determine if there are opportunities to combine responsibilities and/or decrease the overall size of our staff.

I have been very pleased to be part of this process and look forward to the next step and to reporting the result to our Board at its next meeting in April.

Closing

It is important to me, as your president, to provide open and transparent communication to all our members.  I am always available and you should never hesitate to call or email me.  If you have any topics or questions you would like covered in a future edition, please email me at [email protected].

Bruce Stratton
USA Swimming President